Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Mafraq Cemetery: Commemoration of Iraqi Military History and its Implications

The entrance to the Iraqi Army's Martyrs Cemetery in Mafraq

Guest contributor, Brian Humphreys, a doctoral candidate in the Political Science Department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, and Boren Fellow, is conducting research in Jordan on the reconstitution of the post-2003 Iraqi army.

Mafraq, a small city in the north of Jordan, has gained a certain
notoriety recently among Jordanians and foreign NGO activists as the site of a
major refugee camp, which houses thousands of Syrians displaced by the civil
war unfolding just to the north.The war
is close enough that some residents of the area can occasionally feel the
concussions from the Asad regime’s airstrikes impacting rebel positions on the
other side of the border.

To reach
Mafraq from Amman, motorists drive northeast along a four lane highway through
Zarqa, which seems to have grown into the outer suburbs of the Jordanian
capital to the point where it is difficult to distinguish the boundary between
the two cities.The more distant
boundary of Zarqa is still relatively well defined, with the characteristic
concrete and cinderblock neighborhoods of the heavily Palestinian, blue collar
city abruptly ceasing as the highway leads out into the Jordanian desert.

There is little to mark the stretch of desert between Zarqa and
Mafraq except ramshackle shops selling soda and candy bars with unfamiliar
names, clusters of austere military barracks, and large blue freeway signs in
English and Arabic marking the interchanges for Syria, Saudi Arabia, and
Iraq.The otherwise unremarkable signs
are a reminder that the austere landscape is in fact a major geo-strategic crossroads.Wars, refugees, and armies have written the
history of the modern Middle East on the march to or from nearby Damascus and
Jerusalem.More distant powers have also
sent their armies across this bleak expanse in attempts to affect the outcomes
of wars and causes.A small military cemetery
located in the side streets of Mafraq is a reminder of an obscure (to Western
audiences), yet illustrative chapter of this history that continues to resonate
in the present in important ways.

I visited this cemetery in early February, accompanied by two
former Iraqi generals who had been teacher and mentor together in the old Iraqi
Army, and were both veterans of the Arab-Israeli wars of the 1960’s and
1970’s.Iraqi forces passed through
Mafraq twice in the twentieth century, once during the 1948 war for Palestine
(as it is known here), and again in 1967, when the 3rd Armored Division of the
Iraqi Army crossed the desert to confront the Israeli Defense Forces during the
Six-Day War, and remained in the north of Jordan for several years afterwards.When the Iraqis left, they left behind a
modest military cemetery in Mafraq containing the graves of Iraqi soldiers from
the 1967 war and its precursor in 1948.

In the intervening years, the cemetery assumed greater prominence
in official Iraqi mythology as a symbol of national martyrdom on behalf of the
Arab cause, particularly as Iraq became involved in a massive war of attrition
hundreds of miles to the east against Iran, which dwarfed the Arab-Israeli wars
in scale and human sacrifice.As the
Iraqi regime fought for its very existence, it converted the cemetery into a more
elaborate monument that might underline Iraqi claims to leadership of the
shared Pan-Arab cause, and the connection between sacrifices in Mafraq and the
Persian Gulf.

Today, visits to the cemetery must be approved by the Iraqi
military attaché in Amman in advance, as the cemetery is still administered by
the government of Iraq. Entering Mafraq, we asked where the Iraqi martyrs’
cemetery was and were pointed along residential side-streets by a succession of
passers-by to a small plot of land enclosed by an eight foot high wall of
quarried limestone.A careful
inscription above the arched entryway read: Cemetery of the Martyrs of the
Iraqi Army.

The cemetery custodian’s son, Ahmad, a local fourth grader, came
across the street from his family’s home with the key to the gate and opened it
for us, revealing a view of an obelisk with a Qur'anic inscription at the base
and, at the top, a small replica of the distinctive Martyrs’ Monument in Baghdad
built by Saddam Husayn’s order during the first years of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq
war.

The cemetery was mostly free of the
ubiquitous litter that blights most urban spaces in Jordan, including the
residential sprawl outside the cemetery walls.The small cemetery contained perhaps fifty well-kept graves amid rows of
olive trees and benches. Ahmad appeared a short time later with a tray of tea
and sugar, the universal currency of hospitality in the Middle East, while we
discussed the military and cultural history that had produced the cemetery at
Mafraq.

Amid the modest soldiers’ graves there were two much more recent
and elaborate graves belonging to prominent Iraqi exiles who died long after
the destruction of the Ba’thist regime in 2003.(One a prominent general in the old army, and the other 'Abd al-Rahman 'Arif, briefly
president of Iraq in the turbulent era leading up to the Ba’thist coup of 1967
that paved the way for Saddam Husayn’s ascent to absolute power in Iraq.)The graves were an indication that, far from
being a forgotten relic of Saddam’s claims to Pan-Arab leadership, the cemetery
has acquired a second life in the post-Saddam era as an enclave for an Iraqi
nationalism that has largely been excluded from the public sphere inside
Iraq.

In recent years, official commemorations have been held at the
cemetery on January 6th, which marks the founding of the Iraqi Army in
1921.These have been attended by Iraqi
embassy officials in Amman and retired officers, and received media coverage.
This year, the embassy also held an invitation-only gala celebration in Amman
to mark the date, which was attended by many former officers as well as
military attaches from other nations.This suggests that Iraqi nationalism and its military foundations, which
predate Ba’thist rule by decades, remain a significant part of Iraqi public
discourse.This holds true both within
Iraqi government represented by its diplomats abroad, and the former officers
who attended the events in Amman and Mafraq.

My hosts at the Mafraq cemetery, who attended the embassy event,
said that the Iraqi ambassador delivered relatively uncontroversial remarks
about the unity of Iraq and the historical role of the army in preserving this
unity.Such comments affirming national
unity and the heroism of the national army are, in fact, a nearly obligatory
part of public discourse among Iraqis, even among warring factions bitterly
contesting operational and cultural control of the army.

However, even in ceremonial contexts, cracks
in the facade of unity are often visible.It is no small irony that many of the retired Iraqi officers in
attendance were exiles and would likely not be able to attend similar events
inside Iraq. This fact hints at the significant ambiguities that characterize
the boundaries between shared belonging and division, which persist in the
post-2003 era.

A more subtle marker of these ambiguities was the absence of
medals on the dress uniforms of the serving Iraqi officers present at the Amman
embassy event, something the retired Iraqi officers noted. Such medals typically signify participation in
a military campaign, individual merit, or the personal sacrifice of those
wounded in combat.

American advisers
made several desultory attempts to institute a new awards system or, on occasion,
to confer U.S. decorations on Iraqis after 2003, but such efforts typically
lacked legitimacy in Iraqi eyes and never gained institutional traction.The Iraqis themselves remain divided on the
meaning and interpretation of the battles of the post-2003 period to the extent
that no significant complex of commemorative practices and visual symbols
relating to them has appeared within the Iraqi civil-military sphere to
date.

Such ambiguity also prevails when Iraqis are confronted with the
symbolic universe of the pre-2003 period.Iraqi regulations state that awards and decorations of the previous army
may be worn by military personnel who served in it.The only exception is the bravery medal issued
during the Iran-Iraq war.This is a
seemingly odd omission when one considers the relatively broad-based and
intense patriotism that characterized this era of war in Iraq.

However, it nonetheless
accurately reflects the political sensibilities and geo-strategic alignments of
the current Iraqi government, which is perceived by many as favoring close ties
with Iran.In terms of the actual social
practice of the contemporary Iraqi army, the Iraqi military attaché in Jordan himself
informed me that decorations from the pre-2003 era are never worn because
they identify the wearer as a Ba’thist sympathizer, even when such medals denote
service in relatively uncontroversial campaigns.

This discourse of ambiguity, selective recall, and exclusion
applies to other relics of the pre-2003 military-symbolic complex of Iraq,
which survive and are in continuing use, such as the Martyrs’ Monument and
other major monumental complexes built during the Iran-Iraq war.The Mafraq cemetery is merely one small but
intriguing example of this phenomenon.

The wars of 1948 and 1967 commemorated in Mafraq are part of an Iraqi
nationalist narrative that is broadly accepted in Iraq, but has particular
resonance among the class of former elites now largely excluded from
participation in domestic Iraqi politics and society.At the same time, Iraqi commitment to the Pan-Arab cause of neighboring, predominantly Sunni states, has traditionally
elicited misgivings from many Iraqi Kurds, religious Shi'a Arabs, and others wary of
Arab Sunni political dominance within Iraq who now occupy the highest positions
of power in the state.

Interpreted in this context, the Mafraq cemetery allows the
current government a space where the rituals of Iraqi unity may be performed
according to its preferred script with a constituency that, even in exile, has
the capacity to influence events in Iraq. Conversely, for exiled elites, the
cemetery may serve as a focal point for commemoration and valorization of a
nationalist narrative integral to their identity -- and thus political
cohesiveness.As such, Mafraq is one of
the many symbolically meaningful sites where Iraqis are attempting to frame and
institutionalize views of the past through use of symbols and performance of
commemorative rituals, which will serve to influence how they identify
themselves and conceptualize their place within the broader national community.

Oftentimes, we are encouraged to view Iraqi nationalism as either
insignificant window-dressing of an artificial state, or else to accept its
claims of unbreakable unity at face value.Places like Mafraq suggest that we would instead do well to consider how
different groups of Iraqis attempt to define the meaning of Iraqi unity and the
rules of belonging in a given context.A glimpse of these processes in action at Mafraq suggests that
symbolism and ceremony represent in fact consequential acts of power. They show us which narratives of national identity and belonging are being
institutionalized within the Iraqi civil-military sphere today.

About Me

Eric Davis is Executive Director, MA Program in Political Science - Concentration in United Nations and Global Policy Studies, Professor of Political Science and the former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA. He is author of CHALLENGING COLONIALISM: BANK MISR AND EGYPTIAN INDUSTRIALIZATION, 1920-1941 (Princeton University Press, 1983; Institute for Arab Development, Beirut, 1986, and Dar al-Sharook, Cairo, 2009); STATECRAFT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: OIL, HISTORICAL MEMORY AND POPULAR CULTURE (University Presses of Florida, 1993); MEMORIES OF STATE: POLITICS, HISTORY AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN MODERN IRAQ (University of California Press, 2005; Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2008; and the forthcoming, TAKING DEMOCRACY SERIOUSLY IN IRAQ (Cambridge University Press). Currently, he is writing a book on the Islamic State and the changing modalities of terrorism in the Middle East. He can be contacted at davis@polisci.rutgers.edu and @NewMidEast